The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it.
Our mission: to answer, scientifically, the biggest questions of all.
- What is our Universe made of?
- How did it become the way it is today?
- Where did everything come from?
- What is the ultimate fate of the cosmos?
For countless generations, these were questions without resolutions. Now, for the first time in history, we have scientific answers. Starts With A Bang, written by Dr. Ethan Siegel, brings these stories — of what we know and how we know it — directly to you.
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Why power generated through nuclear fusion will be the future, but not the present, solution to humanity’s energy needs.
It’s a strange idea to consider: that a tiny building block of matter, the atomic nucleus, holds the greatest potential for energy release.
And yet, it’s true; while electron transitions in atoms or molecules typically release energy on the order of ~1 electron-Volt, nuclear transitions between different configurations release energies a million times as great, on the order of ~1 Mega-electron-Volt.
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From before the Big Bang to the present day, the Universe goes through many eras. Dark energy heralds the final one.
A wild, compelling idea without a direct, practical test, the Multiverse is highly controversial. But its supporting pillars sure are stable.
The surface and atmosphere is colored by ferric oxides. Beneath a very thin layer, mere millimeters deep in places, it’s not red anymore.
The first supernova ever discovered through its X-rays has an enormously powerful engine at its core. It’s unlike anything ever seen.
Just 13.8 billion years after the hot Big Bang, we can see 46.1 billion light-years away in all directions. Doesn’t that violate…something?
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Many mavericks look to Einstein as a unique figure, whose lone genius revolutionized the Universe. The big problem? It isn’t true.
Beyond stars, galaxies, and gravity, studying the fundamental workings of nature reveals widely applicable lessons for learners everywhere.
More than two years after JWST began science operations, our Universe now looks very different. Here are its biggest science contributions.
What are dark matter and dark energy? The large-scale structure of the cosmos encodes them both, with ESA’s Euclid mission leading the way.
The most common visual depictions of the history of the Universe show the Big Bang as a growing tube with an “ignition” point. Why is that?
The fabric of spacetime is four-dimensional, with three for space and only one for time. But wow, time sure is different from space!
Could life be widespread throughout the cosmos, in the subsurface oceans of ice-covered worlds? NASA’s Europa Clipper mission investigates.
An in-depth interview with astronomer Kelsey Johnson, whose new book, Into the Unknown, explores what remains unknown about the Universe.
There are a number of factors to consider when choosing where to build a telescope. These 3 locations, on their merits, surpass all others.
The Universe changes remarkably over time, with some entities surviving and others simply decaying away. Is this cosmic evolution at work?
Black holes encode information on their surfaces, but evaporate away into Hawking radiation. Is that information preserved, and if so, how?
Artificial intelligence is much more than image generation and smart-sounding chatbots; it’s also a Nobel-worthy endeavor rooted in physics!
National Geographic’s first James Webb Space Telescope book shows us the cosmos like never before.
The earliest Milky Way-like galaxy, REBELS-25, was spotted rotating about its axis. It’s only 700 million years old: 5% of our present age.
Interferometry gave us a black hole’s event horizon, but that was in the radio. What can we accomplish with a new optical interferometer?
Today, the deepest depths of intergalactic space aren’t at absolute zero, but at a chill 2.73 K. How does that temperature change over time?
The Universe has been creating stars for nearly all 13.8 billion years of its history. But those photons can’t match the Big Bang’s light.
Comet A3, also known as Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, has sprung to life since 2024’s last equinox. Here’s how to catch the show for yourself.
In theory, dark matter is cold, collisionless, and only interacts via gravity. What we see in ultra-diffuse galaxies indicates otherwise.
The Parker Solar Probe is about to undergo its seventh encounter with Venus on its journey toward the Sun. Here’s how fast it’ll go.
In all directions, at great distances, the Universe looks younger, more uniform, and less evolved. Does that mean Earth must be the center?
Time is relative, not absolute, as gravity and motion both cause time to dilate. Your head and feet, therefore, don’t age at the same rate.
Despite many ultra-distant galaxy candidates found with JWST, we still haven’t seen anything from the Universe’s first 250 million years.
LHC scientists just showed that spooky quantum entanglement applies to the highest-energy, shortest-lived particles of all: top quarks.
Just 460 light-years away, the closest newborn protostars are forming in the Taurus molecular cloud. Here are JWST’s astonishing insights.
It’s possible to remove all forms of matter, radiation, and curvature from space. When you do, dark energy still remains. Is this mandatory?
Do we actually live in a deterministic Universe, despite quantum physics? An alternative, non-spooky interpretation has now been ruled out.
With the discovery of Porphyrion, we’ve now seen black hole jets spanning 24 million light-years: the scale of the cosmic web.
It would get rid of our hazardous, radioactive, and pollutive waste for good, but physics tells us it’s a losing strategy for elimination.
Almost all of the stars, planets, and interesting physics happens in the inner portions of galaxies. Is that conventional wisdom all wrong?